Why are life nodes required for any build to be viable?

We have this huge passive tree, but most of it is ultimately a waste of space, time, data, bandwidth, etc.?

Every viable endgame build requires as many life nodes as you can possible incorporate or you will suffer an ugly truth. Why is this the POE way?

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trollforum wrote:

We have this huge passive tree, but most of it is ultimately a waste of space, time, data, bandwidth, etc.?

Every viable endgame build requires as many life nodes as you can possible incorporate or you will suffer an ugly truth. Why is this the POE way?

Le Block

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SL4Y3R wrote:

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trollforum wrote:

We have this huge passive tree, but most of it is ultimately a waste of space, time, data, bandwidth, etc.?

Every viable endgame build requires as many life nodes as you can possible incorporate or you will suffer an ugly truth. Why is this the POE way?

Le Block

You could go max block, spell block, evade, acrobatics, phase acrobatics, atziri boots and you'd still need life for the odd time you don't avoid damage and for degen based stuff like chaos zombies.

Theres a balance between life damage and utility you have to find. It's part of the challenge.
(Although I agree it could use a bit of tweaking)

Title should read "Why are survivability nodes required for any build to be viable"
Because CI.

Because you can't avoid getting hit. Because of desync.

Because the other defense mechanics are not given room to shine. There's no CI equivalent for armor or evasion -- and CI is total junk. So you need life to do anything.

Also elemental status, stun, etc. all scale vs your max life, so you need it for more than just taking hits.

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wicca369 wrote:

Title should read "Why are survivability nodes required for any build to be viable"

"Why are survivability nodes required for any build to survive."

Because if they weren't it'd be a no-brainer to stack damage nodes.

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Holocaustus wrote:

"Why are survivability nodes required for any build to survive."

Because if they weren't it'd be a no-brainer to stack damage nodes.

Pretty much. If survivability wasnt required, we'd all take every single damage node and then complain about having this huge skill tree, but only taking damage nodes and how everything else is a waste.

while all replies are technically correct, Id like to expand slightly on this:

1. Why is survivability so important ?

Because PoE's meta, at least endgame-wise, is defensive. Each ARPG has some kind of meta, and in PoE its definitely defense-based. I doubt its accidental, since we are supposed to be exiles, not some kind of demi-gods who eat devourers for breakfast and crap avian retches out.

Since life steal in the game is capped, and the limited instant lifesteal is hard to get to sustain, especially with recent nerfs, this game is and will be defense-based.

Also, dying is bad as in hardcore, its self-explainable. In softcore, dying a ton after getting into 70ish levels will mean you are unable to gain exp.

2. But why is life nodes/hp pool so important ?

This is purely a design decision. PoE with few minor exceptions doesnt offer much in terms of sustained damage, since you can always spam hit pots, logout, pop a portal or runaway by popping a quicksilver, or any combination of those methods.

The overwhelming majority of dangerous situations in PoE is burst damage : (near)one-shots. This is by design.

Now why life works the best. Armor in this game is designed to be very ineffective against burst damage. Evasion is pretty good, but entropy means you WILL get hit some time.

Block, both attack and spell based is really effective, but caps out at 75%. Meaning, at some point you WILL get hit..

as such, life (or ES) pool is really the biggest and best effective defense against one shots. that's not to say you should have no other defense besides it, because then you CAN get two/three-shotted in succession, but having a big pool is always beneficial.

(also, having a big HP pool means less chance for mobs to stun you or inflict status ailment on you.)

because there is no real reward for having high dps but there are crippling penalties for not playing path of life nodes.